Heather Yakin: It's time to talk about guns, mental health

It's time to stop pretending that the intersection of easy-access guns and hard-to-access mental health care hasn't created a problem.

It's time to stop pretending that the intersection of easy-access guns and hard-to-access mental health care hasn't created a problem.

The likes of the Newtown shooter and the Aurora shooter — these are statistical outliers. They are among the vanishingly small number of people who, their perceptions warped by illness or anger, set out to wreak indiscriminate vengeance.

Most people with psychological issues aren't violent, even when those problems extend to psychosis. Among those who do turn violent, most turn that anger upon themselves. The exceptions — when disturbance and guns combine — highlight the places where our social net has frayed.

The problem is complex and won't be solved by rushed legislation or quick-fix patches. But there are some things that could help. Most important: Stop cutting mental health budgets, and get rid of the stigma to seeking help.

We need to have a realistic and non-ideological discussion of gun culture and access in the United States, free of histrionics from hard-liners of both the no-gun and pro-gun camps.

I've always been fairly libertarian when it comes to guns. I come from a family of hunters, and when I was a kid, my mom, who occasionally worked alone at night, had a pair of revolvers for protection. Guns are tools, and there are so many of them — roughly 270 million in the United States — that flat-out bans aren't realistic.

But I don't really get the thing with AR-15s. That's a powerful weapon, sure, but one that's poorly suited to self-defense and of no special value for hunting, since a good bolt-action rifle does just fine and has plenty of stopping power. Large-capacity magazines? How many shots do you need? If 10 shots per magazine aren't enough, maybe you shouldn't be shooting.

I've fired an assault rifle (supervised by a police firearms instructor), and I mean a real assault rifle: an M4 in fully automatic mode. You don't need these guns to hunt.

So can we require licensing of AR-15s in states that allow them? Can we limit magazine sizes? Can we track large ammunition purchases the way we track large cash transactions?

Since Columbine, we've adapted to mass violence.

Schools are hardened targets, with controlled entry and teachers trained to lock classroom doors in case of a siege. Cops and schools practice "active shooter" drills. We know what "active shooter" means.

But we haven't yet figured out that when that rare someone withdraws and begins obsessing over weapons and perceived wrongs, it's time to help them get help. We haven't yet figured out that by cutting mental health funding, we're leaving people in distress. We need accessible treatment programs that help people get their lives back together, without fear of being locked away or stigmatized.

The survivors and families of the dead — from homicide or suicide — are asking for these things. The least we can do is listen.